The present invention relates to a method for producing an electroluminescent element (may be referred to by the abbreviation EL) in which a pattern is formed.
EL elements attract attention as spontaneously emitting flat panel display elements in which positive holes and electrons, which have been poured into from opposed electrodes, are combined in a luminous layer to generate energy, and the energy excites fluorescent material in the luminous layer to emit light of a color corresponding to the fluorescent material. Among them, an organic thin film EL display using an organic material as a luminescent material has such a high luminous efficiency that high intensity luminescence can be realized even if the applied voltage is a little less than 10 V, is possible to emit light with a simple element structure, and expected to be applied to low-cost simple expression displays such as advertisements and the like in which specific patterns are emitted and displayed.
In the production of a display using such an EL element, patterning on an electrode layer and an organic EL layer is usually put into practice. Methods of EL element patterning include a vapor deposition method of a luminescent material via a shadow mask, a method of separately painting through inkjet, a method of destroying specific luminescent pigment through ultraviolet irradiation, a screen printing method, and others. However, these methods could not provide an EL element being able to realize all of the high luminous efficiency, the high light takeout efficiency, the simplicity of the production process, and the formation of highly fine patterns.
The present invention has been achieved in order to solve the above-mentioned problems. It is a main object of this invention to provide a method for producing an EL element for realizing the high luminous efficiency, the high light takeout efficiency, the simplicity of the production process, and the formation of highly fine patterns.